Exploring Designs for Enhancing the In-store Customer Experience through Digital Product Information in Fashion Retail

Abstract: The ongoing consumer transition from offline to online shopping in the fashion retail industry requires retailers to take action. Not only do consumers shop more online, they also go online for research of retail products. Forecasts tell that bringing the online experience to offline stores might bridge the gap between the two channels. The online experience provides high-end digital content, and puts a demand on the product information offline as this was found crucial for the customer experience. The marketing possibilities in-store was found to be an advantage to bricks-and-mortar retailers. Thus, this study aims to investigate how the customer experience can be enhanced in retail bricks-and-mortar stores through digital product information. A survey was conducted to identify user requirements in terms of product information. An augmented reality prototype was formed to satisfy the identified user requirements. The prototype was tested in two user studies that evaluated the content, visualization, interaction and satisfaction. The prototype was iterated between the two user studies. The most crucial parameters of fashion retail product information were established, together with implications for the visual representation and interaction. It was found that there were unfulfilled user needs with existing service options, which were satisfied with the use of an augmented reality prototype for product information retrieval. The use of AR for this purpose also proved to be able to contribute to an omnichannel solution for multi-channel retailers. The conclusion was thus that the customer in-store experience could be enhanced by the introduction of an augmented reality prototype for product information retrieval, taking into account the implications for content, visualization and interaction provided in this study.